New local podcast brings energy, avoids fatalism about Kansas environmental issues • Kansas Reflector

Like many of you, dear readers, I drive a predictable path to work. Mine takes me back and forth on K-10, or Kansas State Highway 10. My stretch of K-10 takes me from Lenexa to Lawrence.

The features of the drive don’t change much. The same billboards. The same businesses. The same suburban housing. The same trees.

This week, a new and locally produced podcast changed my perception of that landscape dramatically — especially those trees. It’s not the same old drive anymore.

The podcast that did this? “Up From Dust,” from the Kansas News Service and KCUR. Celia Llopis-Jepsen, a veteran Kansas reporter, co-hosts the podcast with David Condos, who recently moved from a reporting hub in Hays to southern Utah. Together they have so far created four episodes, which document how our choices as Kansans have shaped nature around us.

(Disclaimer: I have worked with Llopis-Jepsen and Condos through my previous job at a journalism association.)

During my previous drives down K-10, I had never noticed the “Green Glacier” phenomenon that “Up From Dust” documented in an April episode. Scientists use the term to explain the recent and relentless creep of trees from the eastern portion of Kansas to the vital prairie ecosystem in the western part of the state.

The most obvious and invasive signs of this creeping crisis dot the fence lines and property boundaries along most Kansas highways, including K-10. It’s the red cedar, a tree that spreads quickly into prairie lands originally free of trees. Those prairies are much healthier, as the podcast explains, without red cedars or any other trees.

As I explain this to you, I blush. As many times as I write and rewrite those sentences above, they pale in comparison to the specificity, energy and research that packs “Up From Dust.”

Condos and Llopis-Jepsen have been crafting these episodes for two years, and when paired with the production help of Makenzie Martin, their reporting bounces between light and serious, from scientific to personal, from local to global, from historical to timely. The first episodes mirror the excellence of trailblazing podcasts, such as Planet Money or the Vox explainer podcast, by breaking down complex issues for those of us without Ph.D.s in soil science.

The team calibrated the tone of the series perfectly. “Up From Dust” shows concern for the environment but strives for optimism. It’s a delicate balance. The science of climate change presents an existential threat, so it would be easy to retreat to a gloomy corner.

Instead, the podcast takes us into bright Kansas landscapes: foraging for garlic mustard, reclaiming a prairie stream, spotting swallowtail butterflies. The anecdotes bring wonder back to nature rather than simply leaving us worrying about nature as a victim. The producers describe the podcast as being “about the price of trying to shape the world around our needs, and the folks who are fixing our generational mistakes.”

The tone is also smart because it avoids dividing environmental science into the typical two-sided journalism rhetoric of political conflict: Democrats vs. Republicans, or corporations vs. environmentalists. It’s an easy groove for journalists to fall into, and “Up From Dust” wholly avoids it.

This podcast also suggests incremental steps Kansans can take, while acknowledging that they aren’t cure-alls for the climate damage we have done. Amid threatening daily climate news, the podcast shows Kansas nature as vibrant and resilient. And it shows us Kansans as vital.

In addition to being persuasively practical, this podcast also is subtly emotional. There is sometimes a hint of heartache in Llopis-Jepsen’s voice. In the most recent episode, “Healing the ground we broke,” she sees Kansas pastures missing eight feet of topsoil, the result of plowing and erosion. She watches demonstrations of our current topsoil, powdery and gray, unable to hold together during rainstorms. The damage to forests, fields and streams seems to wrench at her during her visits.

But that sadness is countered by joy. In the same episode, our hosts remind us of the perils of the Dust Bowl almost a century ago: choking storms, failed crops and even death. That mood is immediately followed by optimism: a soil biologist who playfully freezes the interview each time Llopis-Jepsen refers to soil as “dirt.” Throughout these episodes, laughter and joking juxtapose segments acknowledging the environmental damage already done.

A lot of the reporting in the podcast is helpfully historical. Who knew where honeybees came from? Who knew that World War II munitions led to increased use of fertilizer after the war? And who knew the threat posed by each planting of a Bradford pear tree?

In revealing this historical context, Condos and Llopis-Jepsen trust that their listeners understand nuance. Their often-complex explanations don’t provide simple fixes. (Yes, no-till farming has benefits, but it also has costs.) Nuance is also comfortable in their podcast because the length of the episodes, all more than 34 minutes, allow them to explain complicated issues more fully than a four-minute radio story.

All the while, the focus remains on Kansas. Throughout the podcast, farmers, scientists and other experts redirect the gaze of our environmentalism from the coasts to Kansas backyards and crop fields.

“We are saving the last of this ecosystem,” Flint Hills rancher Daniel Mushrush says, referring to the prairie. “If a coral reef is worth saving, if some pristine mountain stream is worth saving, then so are the Flint Hills.”

With its regional focus, this podcast is a priceless educational resource. Every environmental science class in the state should listen as required course work. In addition to the audio journalism, KCUR’s website hosts photos, stories and graphics that further explain the podcast reporting. Any educator will marvel at how Condos and Llopis-Jepsen have fun with science. And by doing so, they make it fun for us.

A few weeks ago, a Kansas high school student contacted me about an ambition. He wants to cover environmentalism in a way that reaches his fellow teenagers. Of course, I will be sending him this podcast because it provides a template for how to cover the Kansas environment.

At the end of the episode titled “The Green Glacier,” the same Flint Hills rancher quoted above describes the grueling days he spends with a chainsaw, clearing trees that threaten his grassland.

Describing the effort to keep 15,000 acres free of trees, he says: “It’s not easy work, but it’s worthy work. At least, there’s a road map forward.”

The same can be said for Kansas journalists after listening to this podcast series: Covering the local environment requires dedication, but there’s now an admirable path to follow.

Eric Thomas teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.